Illegal immigrants: Boon or bane?

As the rhetoric rages over the costs versus the benefits of
illegal immigration, even the experts have radically conflicting
opinions.

Some researchers say the costs of sustaining illegal immigrants
far outweigh the taxes they pay into the system and any other
benefits they may provide the state or nation - things like lower
labor costs and therefore lower prices to consumers. Other
economists say the net cost to society is very small or that the
benefits of illegal immigration may even balance out the costs.

Two recent studies highlight those clashing perspectives.

An August 2004 study by a researcher at the Washington-based
Center for Immigration Studies - a hard-line advocacy group for
stricter immigration laws and enforcement - concluded that the
costs of illegal immigration represent an annual net cost to U.S.
taxpayers of $10.4 billion. That figure translates to $2,700 per
illegal household, the study by Steven A. Camarota concluded.

However, a September 2005 study conducted by the Tomas Rivera
Policy Institute at the University of Southern California's School
of Policy, Planning and Development, reached very different
conclusions. The institute's Web site says that it "advances
critical, insightful thinking on key issues affecting Latino
communities through objective, policy-relevant research and its
implications for the betterment of our nation."

That study's authors stated that many studies, such as
Camarota's, incorrectly include in their data the cost of educating
the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. Since those children
are American citizens, they should not be included in the
calculations, the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute study says.

California's costs

The Rivera study also contradicted Camarota's conclusions that
illegal immigrants create a fiscal drain on society because they
cost taxpayers significantly more than the tax revenues they
provide. The Rivera study focused primarily on California and
concluded that the net fiscal cost of illegal immigration to the
state was much lower than the cost represented in the Camarota
study.

The Rivera study, which used data assumptions from a National
Academy of Sciences estimate in 1997, looked at households with
both legal and illegal Mexican immigrants. It concluded that based
on a net annual cost to the state of $179.2 million and 1.4 million
households as reported by the 2000 Census, the average annual cost
to taxpayers represented by each of those households was $128.

However, that figure "does not take into account other
significant fiscal contributions" and offsets, the report's authors
said.

They said one of those contributions is in the form of Social
Security tax payments by many illegal immigrants - payments the
workers never take advantage of on the benefits side because they
have used fraudulent identification numbers. Those payments go
directly into the Social Security Administration's "Earnings
Suspense File," the report states. It said that California
residents contributed $17 billion to the total amount that went
into that file in 2000, and the vast majority of that money was
contributed by illegal immigrants.

In 2005, the federal government reimbursed California $121
million to help defray its costs for incarcerating illegal
immigrants, but last year, those costs ran an estimated $750
million. Earlier this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the
federal government to pay the difference.